Santa Fe Springs residents give concerns to city officials in town hall meeting

SANTA FE SPRINGS -- Concerns over public safety, social services and recreation were among the issues residents brought up at Thursday's town hall meeting on the city budget.

More than 50 people were present. After listening to City Manager Thaddeus McCormack and Jose Gomez, assistant city manager and director of finance, present information on the budget, residents then broke up into small groups to provide their feedback.

McCormack called the meeting a success.

"I think it went very well," he said. "We were trying to increase our civic engagement and whether the opinions are good or bad, the point was to solicit feedback. I think we achieved that."

Mike Foley, president of the Santa Fe Springs Chamber of Commerce/Industrial League, also thought the meeting was a success.

"It's great the city opened its doors to the business and residential communities," Foley said. "It was very positive."

Public safety may have been the biggest concern of residents.

Gloria Duran, a former Los Nietos School District board member, was unhappy about the reduction of public safety officers.

Duran said she would like to see more officers stationed at schools.

As a result of the need to cut the budget due to the loss of $32 million in redevelopment funding - thanks to its elimination by the state - the city has had to cut the numbers of public safety officers down to two full-time and four part-time, McCormack said.

At one time the city had 13 although the most recent action was to eliminate one position, he said.

Hilda Zamora, Little Lake school board member, said she's worried about public safety.

"We need more police patrols," she said. "We've been hearing about robberies."

Zamora said another priority should be community services, such as afterschool programs.

"We need to hire more recreation staff," she said.

There were also complaints that community services were being reduced, including a reduction in the city's swim program.

"My kids grew up and they all went through the swim program," said Martha Hanamaikai.

Now my kids have to swim at Norwalk," she said referring to a swim team. "It's not like it used to be. You're pulling out all the programs."

The city still opens its pool but for only a couple of months a year.

As a result, Hanamaikai said she worries that graffiti and crime could increase.

McCormack said he sympathized with the concerns but due to the loss of redevelopment Santa Fe Springs isn't the same city it used to be.

"There is a cultural change because we had to make such drastic cuts and changes to our organization," he said. "Our challenge is to identify what our principles are and were and apply those to our new circumstances."

The city laid off 32 full-time employees last year and the number of employees is down from 245 in fiscal 2009-10 to 166 currently, said Gomez.

McCormack said some people were critical that the city officials kept blaming loss of redevelopment for the changes.

"The other thing was why can't we do things the way we used to," he said. "The reason we can't is that our world has changed."